Hot Topics:

Lowell National Historical crew helps storm-relief effort in N.J.

By Pete McQuaid, pmcquaid@lowellsun.com

Updated:
11/29/2012 11:37:53 AM EST

There's only one way to describe the effect Hurricane Sandy had on Gateway National Recreation Area in Sandy Hook, N.J.

"Total devastation," said Mike Comtois, who was one of six Lowell National Historical Park workers to be summoned to assist in the recovery at Sandy Hook after the hurricane. "It was amazing to see the water lines -- there were parking lots under six feet of water."

On Nov. 3, less than a week after the brunt of Hurricane Sandy hit New Jersey, Comtois, a supervisor in Lowell National Historical Park's maintenance division, traveled to Sandy Hook with fellow workers Marc Mousseau, Charlie Raye and Richard Hansen. Law-enforcement officers Traci Shorb and Matt Collins followed a few days later.

The group was dispatched to help the National Park Service's Incident Management Team, a division that repairs damage to national parks in the wake of a natural disaster.

The Lowell employees aren't officially part of the team, but they were specifically called in to do their jobs where they were needed. For example, Raye is an electrician, so when the request came from Gateway for an electrician, his name showed up, and he was made available.

"As an electrician, it's tough to be able to really help someone like that normally," Raye said.

The crew took on a variety of jobs, stabilizing roofs one day and clearing out flooded houses the next.

Advertisement

They worked on a two-week schedule, designed to optimize efficiency by having people work hard for a short period of time before being replaced with a fresh group.

"That's part of being the first team in," said Raye, who had also been sent to do electrical work during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. "You try to stabilize and use what you can. By the time we were leaving and the second team was arriving, it was set up a little bit better and people were able to get more things done."

They were also authorized to help employees of Gateway who had residences in Sandy Hook that were damaged. Raye found himself cleaning up the house of a resident he had met in a National Park Service training session last year.

"I think they learned from incidents in the past that they had to make sure to take care of their employees during a natural disaster," said Shorb, who worked at the control center sorting through employee reassignments.

By the time the Lowell crew left on Nov. 18, there were 526 National Park Service employees from 44 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia working alongside the Incident Management Team.

While the Park Service is a large organization, its employees have a clear commitment to all the parks as well as each other.

"They basically wanted to get the employees in these parks back to work," Mousseau said. "There was a feeling of satisfaction that you were able to help out the other parks and the other employees that worked there."

Welcome to your discussion forum: Sign in with a Disqus account or your social networking account for your comment to be posted immediately, provided it meets the guidelines. (READ HOW.)
Comments made here are the sole responsibility of the person posting them; these comments do not reflect the opinion of The Sun. So keep it civil.